Lynching Impales Democracy, Morality

Violence in the name of the cow has claimed yet another victim, this time a police official, Inspector Subodh Kumar Singh, in Siana, Bulandshahr, Uttar Pradesh.

The reported ringleaders of the mob attack on a police station and arson were from Hindutva organisations such as the Bajrang Dal, whose local chief is the principal accused but had not been arrested at the time of writing. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has spoken against vigilantism in the name of the cow.

His warning has fallen on deaf ears amongst his fellow travellers of the Sangh Parivar. Either that, or they hold Modi’s counsel as pro-forma prime ministerial restraint that can be ignored at no peril. The core principle at stake is constitutional morality.

Cow slaughter is illegal in a majority of states in India, regardless of if that ought to be the case or not. If the law is broken, the law enforcement machinery should penalise the lawbreakers. Mobs cannot take the law into their own hands.

Yet, political leaders of the BJP have glorified those who took the law into their own hands and killed those they suspected of being associated with killing cows. A Union minister garlanded those accused of lynching in Jharkhand. Another stood in solidarity with the body, draped in the national flag, of an accused in the Akhlaq lynching case in Dadri, Uttar Pradesh, who happened to die while in jail.

Lynch mob leaders boasted in Rajasthan that the local political leaders were with them. Political support for upholding a morality different from that of the Constitution leads to the kind of assault on life and liberty witnessed in Siana.

It is welcome that the state government has ordered an inquiry. But the point is not that a policeman’s killing cannot be condoned. Politics must stop valorising all killing, so that every citizen can live with the dignity democracy accords him.

This piece appeared as an editorial opinion in the print edition of The Economic Times.